I have reported from Asia since covering the "Year of Living Dangerously" in Indonesia, 1965-66, and the war in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos in the late 1960s-early 1970s for newspapers and magazines, including the Chicago Tribune and the old Washington (DC) Star. I also wrote two books from that period, "Wider War: the Struggle for Cambodia, Thailand and Laos" and "Tell it to the Dead." In recent years I've reported from Korea for the Christian Science Monitor, International Herald Tribune, Forbes Asia, etc. while writing "Korean Dynasty: Hyundai and Chung Ju-yung," "Korea Betrayed: Kim Dae-jung and Sunshine" and, in 2013, "Okinawa and Jeju: Bases of Discontent." I've also reported a lot from Japan, the Philippines and Iraq and spent much of 2013 as a Fulbright-Nehru senior research scholar in India.

Narendra Modi, several days before he was sworn in as leader of the world’s largest democracy on a gloriously sunny Monday after the stunning victory of his Bharatiya Janata Party in elections for the Lok Sabha, the lower house of the parliament that elects the prime minister, wept as he spoke of the poverty of millions of Indians.

“I have seen people who had only one piece of clothing on their body but had the BJP’s flag,” said the man whose first job was that of a railroad station tea-seller. “Our dream is to fulfill their dreams.”

Modi’s emotional words indicated the emphasis that he would place on an economy that’s stagnated in recent years as the annual growth rate declined from eight percent to half that much.

At his swearing-in, before a select audience of 4,000 people, Modi also suggested his desire to end regional rivalries and hostilities. The presence of leaders from eight nearby countries offered a display of regional cooperation that might give pause to those who see India as in perpetual conflict with its neighbor, Pakistan, and at odds with China, the giant to the north.

In the most important meeting of that portentously beautiful day, Modi sat down with Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif whose presence was about the biggest news of the day aside from the swearing-in itself. Their encounter was the prelude to a longer conversation Tuesday that held out the promise of ending a confrontation that’s lasted ever since the bloody partition of the Indian subcontinent in the final days of the British raj in 1947.

The ambassadors of China and other powers, attending the swearing-in, had to be awed, as were millions of Indians, by this show of good-will between historic enemies.

Narendra Modi, painted portrait (Credit: Abode of Chaos)

Now the question is how far Modi will be able to reach out to other Asian countries, how or whether he will play the nations of northeast Asia, Korea and Japan, against China — and the extent to which he sees them as essential to his vision of a renaissance of economic success.

Modi, while expected to place priority on economic reform, is committed to address growing concerns over China’s expansionist tendencies and ease tensions with Pakistan. At the same time, he’s certain to want to improve on the good-will formed between India and Japan and Korea, increasingly vital investors in major enterprises as well as important trading partners.

Tanvi Madan of the Brookings Institution in Washington summarized the issues driving Indian policy toward China and Northeast Asia.

“Chinese officials and scholars have, publicly at least, welcomed the prospect of a Modi government,” she wrote. “Yet they might come to look with concern at a couple of other potential elements of a Modi foreign and security policy” including “modernization of the Indian military and the upgrading of India’s border infrastructure” and “the deepening of India’s political and economic ties with countries in East and Southeast Asia, especially Japan, Singapore, South Korea and Vietnam.”

The prospect of India increasing its purchases of ships and other maritime equipment from South Korea also suggests possibilities for acquisition of military vessels made in Korea. Anxious to become a major player in the international arms trade, Korea years ago sent naval patrol vessels to India. Now India has agreed to import Korean minesweepers – the harbinger of much more materiel and technology that Korea might provide as it aspires to become one of the world’s top ten arms exporters.

Defense Minister A.K. Antony, visiting Seoul in 2010, signed two memoranda of understanding that indicate how much the two countries stand to benefit from “defense-related exchanges of experience, information and futuristic joint defence technology development….” Korean business interests firmly expect Modi and his ministers and advisers to want to go beyond lip service.

Two issues, however, are likely to arise fairly soon that will indicate how much attitudes on both sides are evolving. First is the long-running problem of construction by POSCOPOSCO, the Korean steel manufacturer, of a huge plant in the state of Odisha. Although the Indian government has long since approved the plant, environmental concerns as well as pressure from local people who would lose their land have delayed the project for nine years.

ResolutionResolution of this issue will present Modi with a crucial test of his economic policies. Will he show the same kind of resolve that he displayed as chief minister of Gujarat? Can he finally bring about construction of the project in the interests of both Korea and India?

The Posco case might prove the simpler to settle since the concept of a steel plant falls definitely within Modi’s vision for a prospering economy capable of producing its own steel, using indigenous iron ore, rather than exporting huge quantities of ore for manufacturers abroad to turn into the final products. Posco’s plan calls for the largest single foreign direct investment into the Indian economy – another reason to make it work.

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